187: How To Explain A Public Blip In Your Career That Affects Your Reputation

Have you ever had a public blip in your career that affected your reputation? Something that happened on the job that made news, or something you did off the job that made news? Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. Today's podcast covers how to explain a public BL that impacts your professional reputation, no matter if you made a poor choice on the job, off the job, or you were involved in a sticky situation or had a professional relationship that adversely affected your reputation or the reputation of your employer. On this episode, we're going to discuss how to explain a public wonder that impacts your reputation. So you've had a misstep at some point in your career. Perhaps you were fired and that firing was public. It made news. Maybe it made the press or it just created news. In your environment, in your ecosystem, now's the time to clean up your reputation. Maybe you need to do it on a much larger scale overall because it's a reputation that impacts your family and coworkers. Or maybe it's just to interview for a new job. How do you explain it? So whether you made that poor choice on the job for taking the job, or maybe you had a boss come in that you did not click with and things just went from bad to worse and everyone got to see it, there are a lot of euphemisms out there for these types of setbacks. There is the bump in a road, a rocky period, a rough patch. I was catching up with a friend of mine and a colleague, and we were talking about this topic. In fact, I was pestering him a little to talk about this topic. His name is Doug Lester and I love Doug Lester. He is an executive coach, he's a career strategist, and we are colleagues. I mean, we meet frequently to talk about business, to talk about each other's work, because even though we're in two different sectors, it intertwines so often. And I had told him he needs to write a blog post about this topic because I see it so much in my work. And he agreed to do it. So this is a podcast based off of his post about the public blip. Now I'm going to include a link in the show Notes to Doug's article. Doug's article is written for someone who has to message an interview to explain a firing. So he's writing it from an executive coaching point of view, which I know would relate to anyone listening to this podcast. So I encourage you to read that. Doug is one of the brightest people I know. He has an Ivy League background, though. He's not one of those guys who's going to throw that out there. But he's also not one of those guys when you ask, where'd you go to college? And he'll say, well, it's near New Haven, or well, it's in Cambridge, outside of Boston. You know the type, right? But he went to Yale. He works for a very esteemed institution outside of Boston in Cambridge. He has his MBA from Wharton. I mean, this guy is bright and he is talented and he has stories after story. So I love people like this. And I'm so grateful that a guy like Doug is in my life. And I am also grateful that he was willing to share this blog post with me. So what I did is I took the words that he used, again, framing for someone trying to apply for a new job. But I expanded it into the public space, the crisis space, because I had asked him, what do you do with a blip? And Doug does not speak in blip isms, if you know what I mean. He's a very intelligent guy, very good writer, but he loves plays on words, he likes silly sounding words and he uses them so beautifully. So definitely check that out in his article. But when talking about the blip, what do you do when you have to explain it? And that is right in my alley because I'm all about response, crisis response, incident response. How do we talk about something that happened and how do we do it in a way that builds us back up because we want to rebuild that reputation? Something happened and we need to restore the reputation. And it could be just for reputation sake, or it could be to get that next job, you know, especially if it is something that's public in nature. So when you're applying for a job, your name is only one Google search away from some incident. So how do we get around it? So I am sharing Doug's advice. So his first step. Step one, recall the motivation that led to your blip. As an aside, isn't blip a great way to describe any type of crisis? Because it could be a massive firing or it could just be like a simple mistake. It could be anything, which is why we love the term. No one takes on a job or an assignment or a project intending for things to go badly. No one does that. No one has that intention to become the next big crisis. So in other words, if something's going wrong in your career, it wasn't the potential for the bad outcome that motivated you for this challenge. It's just the opposite. People want the best to happen. You go into a project, you go into the job knowing you're going to kill it, but then something happens and it could kill your reputation. And I always, no, I don't always say this. I say it enough though, or at least the idea of what I encourage people to do when they look at a crisis or when they're going through it. It's nothing to be ashamed of because everyone makes mistakes. Everyone, everyone does. It's what you do with that mistake that helps you recover from it. So if you find yourself in a tough spot at some point in your career and you need to explain it, you want to recall the original well intentioned motivation. And this is important because it's going to be a part of your response. If you need to publicly write a response that you have to share in a media advisory or a statement, or you're tweeting out this response, you want to remind people how you got there and more important, why you got there. It speaks to the core of your personal brand, which is another way of saying your personal mission statement, your personal value statement. It's going to reinforce the positive aspects that you have either as a leader, an employee, or a potential candidate for a job. Many people have failures. Just an hour ago, I got off a webinar from my indestructible online membership. It was a fantastic webinar about how to use SEO in your website to help drive traffic to either sales, service or issues. I learned so much. It was when I logged off that I realized that there were some people that were sitting in an alternate waiting room and they were not in the original webinar. Again, it was, it was a mistake and it was a professional mistake. It was on me, but it's still stressful. So I did need to respond. So I created a video and put it in an email and wrote, you know what happened in the email. I was in the business of restoring my reputation with people who are in my membership. The risk of not doing so is that you are going to leave that taste in someone's mouth. There could be another story about you, there could be an alternative story about you. And that particular story may not be yours. So make sure you reiterate how you got there, why you're there. The mission is to help. The mission is whatever your mission is, whatever your value statement is, use that as a reminder. Step two, it's owning the blip. I have to keep blip, in my vernacular, from here on out, it's going into the Molly lexicon. I love the word. Don't try to avoid talking about your blip. That is a natural reaction. People want to dance around it, they want to jump over it, they want to do anything not to draw attention to the blip. People are going to notice the effort that you are putting into not mentioning what happened to you. This is often unsuccessful. It is owning the blip is where all the power lies. Many times people aren't expecting it. People are expecting you to hide it. They're listening for you in your words. Are you hiding it through a lie? Are you hiding it through misdirection? But any type of deception or hiding or running from something is not going to help your reputation. You can't rebuild from a lie. You cannot rebuild from deception. If you're hiding, no one can see you and no one can see where you are rebuilding from. They need that source. It's the same question that Doug points out when people ask, what are your weaknesses? And some people will try and outwit the question that say, my biggest weakness is my passion for my job, you know, but it's, it's identifying what that weakness is. And in many cases it's the career blip. So there you go. There's a tactic right there. If you ever have to name a weakness or if you have to name a gap that you have in your knowledge or your learning, you could always go back to the blip because the blip is an opportunity for you to highlight a strength or a positive quality about your character and again, your brand, which is another way of saying your mission, why you work, and your value statement, who you are. But also there's little chance out there that someone isn't going to ask you about it. Or at least they're not going to. They're definitely going to be thinking about it. So if you can own the blip, if you can own the mistake or whatever happened, if you can be the one that brings it out there and puts it on the table, it's going to show that you are self aware and that you are a self confident leader or self confident employee. And as Doug said. Enough said. Step 3. Put your blip into context. And if you notice, folks, if you're a listener to this podcast, the same framework that Doug is using to restore your reputation in a career setting is the same one that we talk about in this podcast when we talk about the indestructible PR framework. This is the Step where you put it into context. So if you have even a hint of a blip in your career, and especially if you are interviewing for a senior leadership position, someone on the recruiting team is going to do a little bit of investigating about you. So they're already going to know about you. They're already going to know about the blip. It's going to be on their mind and ultimately on the mind of everyone involved in that recruiting process. And it's going to be a distraction. A blip or a crisis, no matter what it is, is always a distraction, and that means it's always a problem. It's a problem because it's going to be hard to get your interviewers or people in the recruiting team to fully focus on your strengths or the potential positive impact that you can make, or anything that can dispel any underlying concerns that they might have about you as a candidate. Doug says as a recruiter, he sees this happen over and over again. He calls it the but what about that blip syndrome? Meaning that until you've addressed it, you know you've addressed the blip in the room, the elephant wearing the blip sign around his back. You need to put the context of the blip within your strengths. You need to bake it into your strengths. Because people are always going to get hung up on the curiosity, the doubts in you. They will be convinced that that blip destroyed you. And it's going to be a disqualifier for anything for you in the future. But if you own it, if you commit to it, and you commit to it as a candidate or someone moving on to your next position, they are going to feel compelled to know more about you. And what often happens when people come out of a crisis is they root for you. They want to see what you can do. And if this is something that you've addressed proactively, you've put it into context of your own personal brand, your own motivation, your own rebuilding, then people are going to give you that chance. Because a career blip is only a blip when there's the larger context of a more successful career trajectory surrounding it. So it is important to remember that no blip is going to kill you forever. No blip is going to completely destroy your reputation. That is, if you haven't broken the law, if you haven't done something totally egregious or morally corrupt. We're talking about the blips. You can always get out of the blips. You can always remove that distraction. Now, once you do that, the next thing that's going to happen is that the people are going to be relieved. And that ties into to another tip that we've learned on this podcast multiple times because I've mentioned it and the importance of breath work. Think about what you do when you're relieved. You let it all out, okay? You physically let it all out. You literally let it all out. And then it figuratively lets it all out as well. Think of the negative perception of your reputation the same way it is an exhale. The next step, and this is important from not only an executive recruiting point of view, but also from the crisis rebuild from the crisis communication pr. The next step is getting backup and offering it early. So you may have noticed that up until now, at this point, you are the only one speaking out on your behalf. You are trying to deactivate or that grenade in your hand that is this career blip. You've done it well. You've practiced it. You have practiced it to perfection. And if you've done that, you've gone a long way in solidifying your position. But many times this cannot be done alone. And the same thing for your public reputation. If this is in the public space, you need backup. You need people to believe in you, and you need to give people a reason to believe in you. From an executive recruiting point of view, that's good. References. Make sure your references are solid and make sure all those references know what happened, why it happened, and what you're doing moving forward. Everything that we mentioned on the blip about the blip to this point, you also want to let your references know about that blip. Explain it to them, put it in context. Give them a reason to buy into you and to your restoration of your reputation. References are always critical. So lining up your properly prepared references is an essential step in addressing any career blip in any recruiting process that you are taking part in. And even if that's the recruiting of your reputation again in a public space. So proper preparation involves reaching out to your references early, explaining the basics of the recruiting process. Who's going to contact them? What will they likely ask them about? It's also a time for you to highlight the positive themes about your work and your character. It's no different than dealing with the press. Let's say you're doing an interview. What do you do? You create talking points. You create talking points about your issue. Create talking points about yourself. Share those talking points with your references. Share your talking point with your ambassadors, if you will. The people who are going to be speaking or the sources on your behalf. And if those references don't already know about your career blip, make sure you get them up to speed, correctly, quickly, and explain the situation as best as you can. You want them to want to help you, and if you've considered your references carefully, then they will want to support your career aspirations, they're going to want to support the rehabilitation of your reputation, and they'll likely sense that all of it is true. People who put an effort into rebuilding or restoring their reputation are doing it from a place of trust and doing it from a place of of truth. If you give people a reason to believe in you, they will. Now, it's not going to be guaranteed that you're going to get the next job. It's not going to be guaranteed that you are going to completely restore your reputation, but you are certainly helping remove a major obstacle in the way of you doing so. If you've already let people know how you got here, what the blip was, and how you've changed, you're halfway there, my friends. So in conclusion, remember when you are interviewing for that next important job and you're worried that that blip in your career might derail your effort, remember these four steps. One Reflect on the positive motivation that led to that career blip. Number two, don't shy away from talking about your career blip. Step 3 present your blip in the larger context of your successful career and four line up your references as backup. So while this approach may not be the solution to explaining every career messtep out there, but if your situation is more serious, it's more complex. You can talk to me or if it's from a recruiting point of view or an executive recruiting point of view or something related to your job, I encourage you to talk to Doug Lester because he is the expert. His information is in the show notes. He is going to help you get rid of all of those nagging doubts about you as you head to that next step. But again, if it's a bigger one, if it's online and if it's public, you should definitely try and give me a call too because I would love to help you. In every podcast I include one indestructible tip. It's that leave behind back pocket tip that you'll remember to help you rebuild or restore your reputation. In the case of let's go with the theme of the day, a blip. And here's your tip. When something does happen in the public ether, so to speak, if there's something career Related, professional related that landed you in the news. People are Googling you and your name is attached to your incident that happened to you and to your employer. One of the first reactions that people will do is come off online, which is understandable. They'll clamp down on social media. One social media channel that you likely don't want to do that is LinkedIn. Now you should go in and look at it, clean it up if you need to, but keep it open. LinkedIn is one of those social media channels that puts your best face forward. I mean that literally your profile picture is there and the press can use that photograph. But the press is also going to go back and if it's a big story, they'll look into your career and where you worked. If you have a career of substance, if you have a career that you're proud of, then you want that career to be on LinkedIn, because that is going to be a very important, important element, a critical piece of the restoration process. Reporters are going to use it and all the looky loos are going to go there as well. If you suspend LinkedIn or close it down, people are going to assume that you're hiding, you're hiding from the blip. And that blip is going to be a long term blip. And another word for that long term blip is called a crisis. And we don't want that to happen to you. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you again here next week. Bye for now.